.avi + 1Ghz PowerMac = grinding halt

[5300cs]

I'm trying to play an avi file on my PowerMac (an old Kurosawa movie, not pr0n) and it comes to a grinding halt.

I play it on my ultra-crappy CELERON 650 w/256 Ram & winxp and it runs PERFECTLY. What gives?????????

PowerMac = 1Ghz PowerMac, 512Ram, 64M VRAM
VAIO = 650 Celeron, 256Ram, shared VRAM (w/system)

This is utter b.s. Can anyone explain this?

[idkew]

Try VLC (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14738) as the player.

[5300cs]

I did, it kept giving me error messages that it was skipping too many frames :mad:

I tried MPlayer and that worked :rolleyes: I still think it's stupid though...(thr problem, not MPlayer)

[crazzyeddie]

AVI's encoded with DiVX have never run great on Mac, but i can run any AVI file on my Powerbook 1Ghz. Sounds like you might have driver conflict (more than one driver trying to grab the file) or you're using an old version of a driver. ffmpeg, the official divx plugin and others will all "compete" to decode an AVI file, and if one of those is outdated, that could lead to bad decoding.

Another thing you need to consider is what other apps/processes you're running. On my computer, an AVI file will take up almost all of my processor... even loading a web page or leaving itunes running will result in dropped frames. If you download videos via Bittorrent or another app, see how much CPU those apps use. I know that some versions of the Bittorrent client can use up to 20% of your CPU.